Chris Rosenberg

Members of the DeMeo crew were suspects in Rosenberg's murder but there was not enough evidence to charge them. Years later however, the murder would be among many others charges in a 1984 indictment against the surviving crew members after cooperating witnesses for the government provided a great deal of information on the crew's activities. At the trial in 1988, testimony was given by Dominick Montiglio and Vito Arena linking the remnants of the DeMeo crew with Rosenberg's murder. In 1989 the defendants were convicted of all charges and Joseph Testa and Anthony Senter, the only core DeMeo Crew members who had not been murdered or already imprisoned, were sentenced to life in prison.

With the only information available being the location of New York City and the name "Chris DeMeo", the Cubans had contacts there inquire and eventually the situation led to Roy DeMeo and the Gambino family. Dominick Montiglio, the nephew of DeMeo's superior Anthony Gaggi, became a government witness in 1983 and claims that he was in charge of delivering messages back and forth between the Cubans' contact in New York and the Gambinos. "El Negro" stated that if Chris Rosenberg were murdered, there would be no further conflict. The murder would have to be in the newspapers, otherwise they would not believe it had actually occurred. After being ordered to kill Rosenberg by his superiors, DeMeo stalled for a number of weeks, reportedly due to the close relationship he and Rosenberg had. After a period of inaction on the part of the Gambinos, the Cuban drug lord sent a group of enforcers to New York and threatened violence if Rosenberg was not murdered soon.

In 1979 he visited Florida to set up a cocaine deal with a loanshark customer of Roy DeMeo's who had entered the drug business in an attempt to pay off his debts. This man, Charles Padnick, was acquainted with a Cuban man named William Serrano. Serrano had connections with two Cuban drug merchants known only as "Pepon" and "El Negro". He was informed by Padnick that a group of Italians were interested in purchasing a large quantity of cocaine. After he met with Rosenberg, who introduced himself as Chris DeMeo, Serrano told his Cuban associates and a deal was set up, although Rosenberg was never informed of Serrano's source of the drugs.

Rosenberg was reportedly never informed about the Cuban situation and thus had no indication that his life was in danger. On May 11, 1979, he went to the regular nightly meeting with DeMeo and crew. As he sat at the table with his associates, DeMeo pulled a pistol out of a brown bag sitting on the table and shot Rosenberg in the head, wounding but not killing him. When Rosenberg got up off the floor and stumbled onto one knee, Anthony Senter stood and shot him four more times in the head.

Although the woman friend of Henry Borelli's would confess her role soon after learning about Katz's murder, she was unable to identify Rosenberg. Borelli and Testa were arrested however, and spent months in jail while waiting for trial. They would secure an acquittal in January 1976, but the case would come back to haunt the surviving members of the crew in the late 1980s, when a Federal/State task force targeted the DeMeo Crew.

It was this night, Friday, June 13, 1975, that the DeMeo crew is first known to have been involved with murder and dismemberment. While first-hand accounts of the incident are unavailable, information provided by crew members who cooperated with the government years later as well as the actual remains of Andrei Katz provided clues that were used by law enforcement as well as author Jerry Capeci to reconstruct the events. Andrei was stabbed multiple times in the heart with a butcher knife, presumably by Rosenberg in revenge for the shooting that had ruined his face.

By 1974, a 23-year-old Rosenberg began selling cocaine and quaaludes, again backed by DeMeo. He acquired the Quaaludes through a pharmacist connection, as well as the cocaine, which at the time could be prescribed for medical purposes. Through this pharmacist, Chris Rosenberg and the rest of the early DeMeo crew met 22-year-old Andrei Katz, a man who became what was most likely the crew's first murder victim. When Katz was arrested due to a stolen vehicle he purchased from the crew, he blamed Rosenberg for his predicament.

The revenge came on November 13, 1974, when Rosenberg opened his garage door and was struck with 3 bullet's fired from an automatic rifle. Rosenberg survived through sheer luck, one bullet hitting him in the lower jaw, another his right arm and a third that was aimed for his chest merely glancing off. Surviving what should have been a fatal shooting, Rosenberg was reportedly furious. His jaw was left disfigured from the bullet wound. Despite undergoing reconstructive surgery, from that point on Rosenberg wore a beard to mask the scars that resulted from this attack.

Between his adept car abilities as well as his fledgling drug business, Rosenberg became successful and opened his own car shop named Car Phobia Repairs, which soon became a hotspot for stolen vehicles. By 1972, Rosenberg had his friends stealing cars for him. Two of these friends were the Gemini twins, Joseph Testa and Anthony Senter, who Rosenberg would introduce to DeMeo and become two core members of the DeMeo crew. Testa and Senter, who were both full-blooded Italians, had known Rosenberg since their teenage years.

Rosenberg's criminal career began at the age of 13, when he began dealing marijuana. His first arrest was in 1970 for car theft, which started out as a felony case but was reduced to a misdemeanor. He was given probation rather than jail time. He was arrested again in 1971 for possession of the drug hashish, then again in 1972 for the attempted stealing of a snow plow. Both cases were dismissed.

As the 1970s continued Rosenberg, along with the rest of the DeMeo crew, would commit many more killings. The victims included suspected informants and other mobsters DeMeo and his followers were contracted to kill. Dominick Montiglio, who visited DeMeo frequently to pick up payments for Anthony Gaggi, said in an interview that if the crew didn't kill at least three people a week, they would be depressed. Some were shot to death and left to be found, but the majority of murders committed by the crew followed what came to be known as the "Gemini Method", named so because the main location where the murders took place was the Gemini Lounge, the headquarters of the DeMeo crew through much of the late 1970s.

By the late 1970s, Rosenberg's continued involvement in the drug trade as well as his business with the DeMeo Crew had given him a prosperous lifestyle. He was living in an affluent neighborhood and when not working was training for his pilot's license. He also owned a number of businesses, including a pizzeria and his body shop. His heavy involvement in drug trafficking included importing marijuana from Colombia and dealing in large quantities of cocaine. He was Roy DeMeo's second-in-command and when conducting drug deals sometimes referred to himself as "Chris DeMeo". Roy had become somewhat of a father figure to Rosenberg.

Rosenberg was dealing in small amounts of marijuana and hashish when he first met Roy DeMeo at a Canarsie gas station in 1966. DeMeo recruited Chris to steal cars, which would then be sold off through connections DeMeo had within Canarsie junkyards. Rosenberg was also the first crew member to interact with DeMeo socially at family barbecues and get-togethers at DeMeo's house.

Harvey "Chris" Rosenberg (also known as Chris DeMeo) (October 6, 1950 – May 11, 1979) was a member of the DeMeo crew run by Gambino crime family soldier Roy DeMeo. The gang is suspected of between 75–200 murders in the mid-1970s to the early 1980s. Following a failed narcotics deal with a Cuban drug cartel that Rosenberg stole from, DeMeo killed Rosenberg as restitution.